Ask the Experts

Does Capitalization of Title Tags Affect SEO Ranking?

When optimizing my site for search engines, I know to put the title tags in the header, only use one title tag per page, and make sure that it is relavent to the page, but I was wondering if the capitalization matters? Is "ORANGE BASEBALL BAT" treated different than "Orange Baseball Bat" or "orange baseball bat" and if so, which should I use?

The Down and Dirty answer is No...

...however, that doesn't mean you should go hog-wild with your title tags. You seem to have a pretty good grasp with them, knowing to only have one per page, put it in the header tag and make sure that it properly represents what is on the page, however capitalization does not matter with title tags.

Keep in mind though, that the title tags are typically used by Search Engines on their results page, so what do you want your visitors to see? Would you rather them see

ORANGE BASEBALL BAT

or

Orange Baseball Bat

It's a general best practice to use Title Case, or capitalizing only the first letter in words as that is easier on the eye and easier for potential visitors to read when sifting through search results. But in the long run, there is no effect on your rankings.

Some other tips with Title Tags:

70 Characters or less in title tags

Put the title tag within the head of your pages, not in the body

Only use one title tag per page

Make sure each page has their own unique title tag

Keywords are important in title tags, put the most relavent keywords first and go on from there. Search engines give a good amount of weight to title tags and view the first word as the most important and so on down the line.

Don't keyword stuff your title tags, it's considered bad SEO and can get your site penalized by the search engines

If you put branding in your title tags, do so at the end. Branding isn't important for title tags as your site should naturally rank well for your own company